The Crimson Dagger - Vatican Knights Series 23 (2020), Rick Jones [free ebooks for android txt] 📗

to the principal, Müller listened and nodded. Müller listened to a detailed conversation, about three minutes long, and one that obviously did not invite a challenge on Müller’s part. Orders were to be followed to the letter without question.

“Yes, sir,” Müller stated flatly. Then again after hearing more conversation, he repeated in the same even measure, “Yes, sir.”

Disconnecting the call and then looking at the phone in what Zeller assumed to be disdain from Müller, Zeller asked, “I assume it’s not what you wanted to hear?”

Müller tucked the phone away and looked at the skyscraper. “We’re to stand by,” he told him. “This has now become a political matter. The Vatican has contacted the Federal Ministry of the Interior and proposed an exchange of jurisdictional command.”

“To whom?”

“To the Vatican Knights. Apparently, the Vatican wishes to stage a plan of operation with their elite unit. I’ve just been informed by the Minister for the Interior personally that we’re to stand down due to the delicate affair, in accordance with the Vatican’s request. He also informed me that this was strictly a political move so as not to anger the Catholic constituency, should this go sideways. Our culpability in the matter would be fully expunged upon the failure of the Vatican Knights.”

“But the glory will go to them if they succeed.”

“I don’t care about the glory,” said Müller. “I only care about the results. Besides, the Vatican Knights will operate within a window of four hours. After that, my team goes in.” Müller looked at his watch. “The team will be here in two hours.”

Zeller looked skyward at what was now a visibly damaged pool on the seventieth level. “This will be over by noon.”

“One way or the other,” said Müller, who nodded in agreement, “it will be.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Somewhere Over Western Europe

Kimball, along with his team of Vatican Knights which included Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job and Daniel, were gathered inside of a Cessna Citation Mustang which had a top speed of 479 miles per hour. The cabin was a six-seater, small and cramped, the plane a private charter. Flying at a level of 15,000 feet, Kimball Hayden was briefing his unit on the makeup of Ali Mustafa and his team.

Kimball was forwarding each man the biographical information listed on a tablet, though he could have done so without it because he knew everything there was to know about Ali Mustafa. The others in Mustafa’s cell, however, were all fresh faces.

“Ali Mustafa,” he began without looking at the iPad, “is some kind of mental giant. Smart. Intelligent. He’s a Saudi who comes from a well-to-do family with deep fiscal pockets, though there’s nothing to indicate that they supported him financially beyond his studies at Oxford University where he became a wunderkind of sorts in the computer sciences, and minored in religious studies. Upon graduation with Honors, Mustafa disappeared for two years, so his history is little more than guesses based on his sudden reemergence in Syria as a leader of the Islamic State. There’s no indication that he followed the tenets or ideologies of ISIS when he was a student. After his two years of going off the radar, he emerged as the top-end propaganda artist for the Islamic State who enlisted elite fighters with savior narrative through the Internet.”

The plane took a jarring bump as it hit turbulence.

Then from Kimball: “Prior to the United States deciding to reduce and withdraw its troops from the Middle East, Ali Mustafa was staging films that romanticized and heightened enthusiasm for joining the ISIS regime. People came from all points of the Middle East. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Russia and Turkey to name a few. Numbers were growing. He promoted the virtues of Allah and sentimentalized the executions of infidels as the doorway to Paradise. Mustafa, himself, and on camera, beheaded as many as six people, claiming that Allah would embrace him in the afterlife because he”—Kimball raised his middle- and forefingers of both hands and flexed them to italicize the last four words—"had served Him well.”

Kimball set the iPad aside. “Look, I don’t have to know Mustafa personally to understand what we’re dealing with here. He had the power and the reach to recruit individuals from elite special forces from Turkey’s OKK unit, the Tunisian Armed Forces, from the King Abdullah Special Forces Group from Jordan, and from the Royal Saudi Armed Forces. We’re not going up against novices here. In fact, I was informed that they had already countered an attack by Austria’s Einsatzkommando Cobra unit, which in itself is an elite outfit.”

“How many in the cell?” asked Jeremiah.

“One was killed at the Imperial Treasury. Khalifa. But not until he took out the first wave of first responders. That leaves six, including Mustafa.” Then Kimball started to tick off the names by counting down his fingers beginning with Ghazi, Zamir, Talib and Qusay. Then he finalized his count by adding Abd-al-Mumin to the mix as Ali Mustafa’s chief lieutenant, who had a violent history of his own.

“And the schematics of the building?” asked Isaiah. “Any surprises?”

“Not that I know of,” said Kimball. “Mustafa’s team managed to take down the central nervous system that governed the building. Everything’s dead with the tower nothing more than a shell. We go in, clear the floors, take new ground, and make our way to the hostages. We operate as we have in the past; our procedures do not change.”

Kimball spoke for the duration of the trip by making clear that they had a tight window of opportunity lasting four hours to achieve the mission on two fronts: to bring back the Cardinal Secretary of State unharmed, and to retrieve the Spear of Destiny. After that, then the operational jurisdiction is handed back over to the Austrian government and its Einsatzkommando force, who will work under the strict command of the Federal Ministry of the Interior.

Four hours, however, to clear the floors of a seventy-five-story building in order to achieve the means